http://www.virtuon.nl/blog ...A European Postdoc in American Society Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:27:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It has been a while since I last posted something to my blog and you may have noticed that my frequency of blogging has steadily declined since last year. I guess my inspiration and interest have declined and that is why I am calling it quits for now. I may ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=125 Yesterday, I was drinking rose in the Peter Stuyvesant park in Manhattan, New York, enjoying the gorgeous weather of about 82F/28C. A very nice small park named after the Dutch founder of the New York, called New Amsterdam at the time. Quite a contrast with last weekend, when I was ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=124 Just came back from probably our last skiing trip this season. That is, skiing with the group of friends I hang with at a regularly basis. I have one more trip planned in two weeks from now, when I will ski with a colleague-friend in Vail in Colorado. This is ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=123 The last weeks have been busy but in a good way. My new car has been tested on two trips, on to New York and one to Sunday River (the ski area for which I have a season pass). It is still awesome. In between those activities there were several ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=122 After months of trying to convince myself that I really need one, it is finally there. I bought a car. The picture shows one similar to the one I got and the color matches too. A recent ski trip convinced me that I really would like to be able to ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=121 Two things dominate the news currently: 1) the wind of change called Obama and 2) the credit crisis. The first started off well. I cannot remember ever having seen an US inauguration live, but we watched it at the Broad with about 80% of the people working here. To my ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=120 Every once in a while, I post a blog with some reflection on how things are working out, ever since I came to the US. The first one was posted in Dec 2007, at which stage I was not very satisfied. The second one was not too long after that, ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=119 Six degrees to Kevin Bacon is a concept that says everybody is connected to everybody through a string of five people. It started with Kevin Bacon who at some point said he had worked with more or less everybody in Hollywood, or somebody who worked with them. A similar concept ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=118 Last week was one of the most exciting weeks since I have been here. On Tuesday I flew to Washington for another TCGA project meeting. TCGA is my main research project. It involves a lot of important academic research institutes all across the country. On Wednesday I gave a talk ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=117 Holilday season is almost here. That sounds strange if you do not live in the US, but next week is going to be a quiet because of Thanksgiving. I wrote about Thanksgiving last year so I will not tell you again that Thanksgiving is about eating turkey (the bird, not ... http://www.virtuon.nl/blog/?p=116